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Dateline: 12th April, 2007
Visitors to Cambridge will be able to explore the world of contemporary Maori and Pacific arts from New Zealand during the Pasifika Styles Performing Arts Festival this May. The week-long festival, to be launched on 26th May, will present UK audiences with a dazzling of performing arts, contemporary drama and comedy from the South Pacific. The celebrations are part of the two-year Pasifika Styles project which opened in May 2006, based at the University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Downing Street. A fusion of contemporary style and innovation with ancient culture, it unites the new wave of contemporary Pacific arts with the University's extraordinary historical collections. "We launched the visual arts exhibition in May last year with a powhiri, a Maori ceremony of welcome that left everyone awestruck. Many of the British guests had never seen anything like this before", said Festival Director Alexander Leiffheidt. "This year we will present an exciting selection of contemporary Pacific theatre from New Zealand at the ADC Theatre and the Playroom." The festival will feature work by the well-known NZ comedians Dave Fane (The Naked Samoans) and Damon Andrews together with a play by up-and-coming young playwright Miria George and the black comedy Frangipani Perfume by the landmark Samoan director and writer Makerita Urale.
The visual arts exhibition in the Museum's top gallery will also remain open free of charge until February 2008, displaying the work of thirty New Zealand artists, ranging from established stars to cutting-edge newcomers. "We are committed to creating a UK platform for Pacific-born artists to 'speak back' to European audiences through their art, in their own words and on their own terms," says the project's Creative Director Rosanna Raymond, a Samoan-born artist and scholar who co-curated the exhibition together with Dr Amiria Salmond, a Senior Curator at the museum. "Pasifika Styles brings the richness and complexity of contemporary Pacific art and culture to an ever-wider audience in the UK and elsewhere." Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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